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Using benign bullying to create better societies

These days legislators tend to be hesitant about trying to effect change – especially social change just by passing a law. Today’s conventional wisdom suggests that that can be brought about only through consensus, built slowly and carefully over time. Yet Ireland has recently brought about radical change in two quite unrelated areas noted for entrenched and obdurate public attitudes. Over five years Ireland succeeded in eliminating the use of plastic bags as containers for shopping and eliminating smoking in any public place, including bars and restaurants.

As of a week ago, nearly 37 billion plastic bags had been used in 2008 worldwide, a figure that rises by about a half million bags every minute. Most are not used again, ending up as waste, landfill, or litter. Being light and compressible, plastic bags constitute only 2% of landfill, but since most are not biodegradable they will be there for decades.

As a supermarket operator, I was the battered veteran of a long campaign against plastic bags. I tried charging for them – only to be met by wholesale mutiny among my customers who threatened to shop elsewhere. I tried to persuade shoppers of the virtues of recyclable bags, and even subsidised their sale.

But nothing I did had any effect whatever; indeed, the number of bags continued to increase.

Similarly, Ireland had long been plagued by the impact of people smoking in public places. Only a minority smoke in Ireland, but everyone suffered. Many people, myself included, refused to go into pubs at all, because we would invariably come out with clothes reeking of smoke. Tentative efforts to encourage non-smoking areas had little if any success.

So the ambitious plans of two Irish government ministers to tackle these issues by legislation were received with much scepticism and by concerted opposition by vested interests. “Put a tax on every plastic bag used in retailing?” “Ban smoking everywhere people are working?” Both sounded totalitarian. In traditionally easy-going Ireland, everyone expected such measures to be laughed out of court.

The reality turned out otherwise. Heroically, the two ministers resisted all efforts to dilute their new laws – both refusing to introduce the measures gradually or to allow a raft of exceptions. Vested interests were routed by this unusual and unexpected show of leadership.

Amazingly, the Irish people adopted both of new laws immediately and without question. Within only a few months, even the doubters had been won over, and people began to take pride in their now litter-free countryside and the healthy atmosphere of social gatherings. What are the lessons to be learned from this Irish experience? First, it demonstrates what can be achieved by a leader who is prepared to set a bold course and then stick to it. It shows, too, that people have no real problem even about being bullied a little to do what they in their hearts know is right.

Smoking in public places is now being banned all over Europe. Similarly legislators across the world are re-considering whether they should bring an element of compulsion into attempts to control the scourge of plastic bags.

Certainly Ireland is a better place today as a result of these two bold legislative experiments. The irony is that it should be such a notoriously easy-going society, with a strong aversion to rules and regulations, which should show the world the way forward.

Feargal Quinn is an independent member of the Irish Senate. As president of Brussels-based EuroCommerce, which represents some 6 million shops across the EU, he has repeatedly called for taxes on plastic bags.